Ted Melfi is directing the film.

Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons has joined the cast of Hidden Figures, Fox 2000’s period race drama set during the dawn of the space age.

Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe are toplining the project, which also has Kevin Costner and Kirsten Dunst in the cast.

Ted Melfi is directing Figures, which tells the untold story Katherine Johnson (Henson), Dorothy Vaughn (Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Monáe), brilliant African-American women working at NASA, who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit.

Parsons will play Paul Stafford, the head engineer of the NASA Space Task Group, reporting to Al Harrison (Costner). Stafford is used to being one of the smartest guys in the room but when Johnson joins the group, he must learn to put aside their racial and gender differences in service of a greater goal: to get Glenn into space and back.

Parsons has won four Emmy Awards for his role as nerd Sheldon Cooper in Big Bang. The actor, who had his Broadway debut with The Normal Heart and then reprised his for Ryan Murphy’s adaptation for HBO, is also in talks to star in Warners’ comedy Man-Witch.